Archis's Blog

July 28, 2008

Freetards vs. iPhone

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — archisgore @ 7:55 pm

When I find grapes that’re sour, I just throw them away. Sure there are people who may like ‘em, but just cause others like ‘em doesn’t make me jealous (used to happen back when I was in kindergarten). Anyway, I find a whole community of people, who’re jealous of some other guy’s grapes and are determined to squish them.

Of course, I’m talking about the FSF’s problems with the iPhone. There’s this one guy, who designed a phone that he liked and apparently lots of people like his phone too. So they bought it – with conditions they agreed to – nobody forced them. He assumed he had the freedom to make the phone as he likes it. Apparently not. How dare he? Freedom? Without the permission of Freedom-certifying-authority-sent-to-earth-by-God himself? That’s no true freedom! It’s blaspemy! It’s an outrage!

I work at Microsoft and I use a Windows Mobile. Yes, now I am free to defend the iPhone and call freetards (a term I learnt from LinuxHater – along with ‘luser’) jealous pigs. If you don’t like the iPhone, you’re not forced to buy it. I admit you can’t show off to your girlfriend without the ability grep through your messages, and less through the last-dialled list. So who’s stopping you? Build your own freakin’ phone and use it. Or is this the final admission that you can’t really come up with a consistent, concise, usable piece of junk for people to use, and the only hopes of achieving anything remotely close is to go bothering the underdog?

Till it was the Microsoft vs. Linux battle, I could sympathise with their childish “me-too” jealousies since Microsoft was this purported huge evil empire with Windows entrenched in the Desktop market, and Linux was portrayed as the puny little underdog that nobody ever gave a chance. Awww…. doesn’t that just make you wanna pet it and hug it and give it love? This is different. “Linux on the Phone” initiatives have been going on since forever. Apple came to a market it never knew before. If anything, Apple is the poor underdog here.

Get over it. I know you freetards are used to always being the underdog with an awesome product which nobody used because they’ve been fed this proprietary propaganda. Now you had your chance. You were in the “Linux phone” business before Apple. You got your chance and you blew it. You can’t make a phone that you yourselves would use (else you’d not be bothering Apple with the Genius Bars thing). If half that time were spent in asking yourself why you can’t get a working phone to market, you’d be much better off – perhaps a tad bit productive while you’re at it.

Why not admit it – this has nothing to do with freedom. You have the freedom to not use the iPhone. You have the freedom to use your awesome command-line phones instead of the stupid iPhone with it’s graphical interface. This has always been about wanting what the other guy had. It’s time you figured out what you wanted. It’s time to grow up! You know the market – heck you’ve been trying to build a Linux phone since history itself began. You know the rules of the market – make a phone that people want. Agree to a single platform. Agree to consistent APIs. Take the time to build a good interface (yes, we’ve all seen your windows wobble – and yet you’re jealous of the iPhone – so let’s not waste time commenting about Compiz Fusion again).

July 19, 2008

The lost art of just plain good story-telling!

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , — archisgore @ 12:24 pm

This entry began as a review for The Dark Night, but then I decided people don’t need any more of those. Instead, think of this as a personal take on what makes TDK so different from all the average-joe common movies. We know it’s awesome, we know it’s cool, but we just can’t articulate it. Thankfully, Star Wars fans over the years have articulated what makes SW so great and why we love it so much. It’s not complex(read: pretentious, stupid) concepts like “depth” (commonly portrayed by two characters staring at each other stupidly on screen, or lame long-drawn monologues), or “art” (which means lame complicated dialogues that add no value to the narrative whatsoever – Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions), that made Star Wars (disregard the prequels) so great, it’s plain simple good storytelling. Just think back on the last movie you really loved watching – did you love it because it had a gzillion CG orcs being killed by a gzillion CG elfs/humans? Or did you love it because it told you a good story?

Please don’t confuse “good storytelling” with having “a good story”. The two are orthogonal in nature, but having both only makes the movie all that much better. Books and movies are two different mediums, and simply picking up the linear narrative of the book into a movie doesn’t make a good movie (as a matter of fact, some of the most exciting books don’t have a linear narrative – Count Dracula being my favourite example). When you have a “motion picture” as your medium, then I expect you to take full advantage of that medium in telling the story. Sure, transcribing a book into a movie does get viewers… sometimes… due to the book’s original appeal (aside from the fact that a five-year-old could do it better). Sometimes not – look at how Prince Caspian got a lukewarm response in the box office due to the Hollywoodization! The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was a movie known and expected only by Narnia book fans. It followed the book precisely and it was a hit. Prince Caspian tried to attract an audience who had never been exposed to the books – nobody cared! Almost every person I watched Prince Caspian with would poke me every half-hour and exclaim, “Holy Shit! This is Lord of the Rings! And a lame copy at that.” I swear – I’m not making this up.

Good story-telling isn’t rocket science. Look amongst your family/friends/acquaintaces and you’ll find that some people can tell a story so that people want to hear it. When they speak, they captivate their audience. They can take the simplest of incidences and turn it into a mesmerizing story. How many of us have bought iCrap because of a mesmerizing storyteller?There are lots of components to what makes a story captivating – and the most important one being imagination. Lots of blogs are praising TDK for it’s lack of origins-of-the-joker-story and you know why? Because it leaves things to your imagination. The audience is actively involved in the story – trying to piece together the joker’s character – trying to figure him out (and all the while Batman on screen is trying to do the same). It sort of puts you “on par” with the movie’s characters leading to an intense involvement in the story. The best storytellers of old have always been those who have inspired us to imagine. Heck, even Star Trek fans will acknowledge that behind all the Klingon, and Federation Technology that they claim to admire, the real reason we all love it is because it tells us stories about our potential and inspires us to believe in a better future.

The Dark Knight is a movie that reestablishes your faith in Hollywood and in the film-making community as a whole. There really are some few people in the world who still know how to make good movies. I think it’s a historic achievement to reach IMDB #4 spot on opening night (yes, above Star Wars!) and last I checked, it was IMDB #1 just after the weekend. It’s broken every record there was to break (except highest grossing saturday, apparently, which still remains with Spidey 3.)

Not to mention, the movie takes a lot of story-telling risks. Many situations in the movie don’t have “obvious outcomes” like most of the conventional Spider/Super/<name-your-own>man movies. It’s not the standard three-act arc of introducing the hero, hero suffers minor setback due to underestimated villian, hero comes back with “potential” or “love” or “friendship” or <insert-your-favourite-virtue-here> and kicks villian-ass. TDK has no stupid explosions, and no idiotic climax for the sake of it. If anything, those watching TDK for action are going to find the ending anti-climatic, while those who watch it for the characterization, are going to love it!

We see Bruce Wayne’s convictions towards Batman change over the course of the movie. We see his purpose for becoming Batman change. This was lightly attempted in Batman Forever by Joel Schumacher, but the irritating movie failed to highlight it (Val Kilmer’s famous words, “I’m both Bruce Wayne and Batman, not because I have to be, but because I choose to be.“) We see Bruce realising the purpose of Batman – in the first movie to rid Gotham of criminals (and we have to admit partly to make up for the guilt/shame he feels from his last encounter with Rachel Dawes), in the beginning of TDK for more or less altruistic reasons, towards the middle of TDK because he needs to be, and at the end, because he realises it’s a choice that he has to make. He’s Batman because he chooses to be – because he can – and therefore he can choose to make Batman whatever he wants Batman to be. If Batman needs to be a criminal, it’s as simple as or as difficult as making a simple choice (while sparing us the irritating “artistic” dialogue from the Matrix movies).

Finally, we also get a movie where the hero loses his loved one and will perhaps never know that she was never his to begin with (or rather towards the end). We know what will keep him driving – for vengence. Finally a movie where the climax actually involved Batman doing something for Gotham, instead of saving a stupid damsel-in-distress. A movie that focusses on crime-fighting for once – instead of fighting for some stupid dumb hot chick.

All in all, the movie has depth due to the characterization, and the story, and the way the story is being told. There are no long-drawn dialogues. There are no pointless shots of Batman standing on top of a building (well, there is one – but that’s okay – what Batman movie would be complete without Batman standing there with his cape impressively fluttering in the wind and symbolically as well as literally “watching over all of Gotham”?)

July 17, 2008

The Dark Knight in 24 hours

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — archisgore @ 11:28 pm

Precisely 24 hours remain between now and the time I shall watch The Dark Knight. Most of you are aware of my freaky plans to fly to Mumbai to watch it in the IMAX Dome (until I got reviews from my friends that normal movies in the Dome look pretty bad). Luckily, I have the largest IMAX in the world in Hyd, so I haven’t lost out on a lot.

It’s been a long wait – the last two years have been spent in anticipatory enthusiasm, and it shall all be justified tomorrow night at 10:45 pm. (Working on the Mesh team, especially so close to PDC prevented me from watcing the very first opening show as I had intended. But hey, I love Mesh, I love Batman!)

I won’t rehash all the reviews I’ve, but my friends do think I’m crazy to be so eager to watch it. With any luck, my friends in Pune will be synchronizing their tickets with mine chronologically so we watch it almost simultaneously. The last thing I want is some stupid blogger writing a review before I get to watch the movie.

July 13, 2008

What threshold makes security important?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — archisgore @ 1:42 am

Due to the rather extreme naming of the entry, I toned it down after seeing a major dip in my hits. :-) Sorry if it was offensive, but I was trying to make a point.

You all know my obsession with having a theory named after me, to immortalize my name. After my Motorbike Theory, this may be the next big principle that actually catches on.

Security is a contentious issue for many people. We all want it, but we don’t want to talk about it – because it’s too much trouble, or because facing the facts is too difficult. Security is hard to implement, difficult to maintain, and requires a lot of work by a lot of people – especially us. Companies can add firewalls and encryption and a whole load of bullshit but you can write your password down on a piece of paper and put all that to waste.

Discussing security at the workplace seems to be ignored too often for comfort. Discussing security at home isn’t just unheard of, but considered geeky and boring. You can tell people about the girl who was murdered through Orkut, and you can tell people about the thousands of monetary scams all over the world, and you meet that friend of yours whose facebook account was compromised. Yet after all that, people just don’t learn. You promote strong passwords, security best-practices, and multi-factor auth, and people just don’t care. I guess the convenience of not having to remember a complex password is worth the 0.001% chance that you’ll get murdered over orkut, or have all the money in your bank account stolen. The risks of corporate documents being stolen are frequently dismissed as, “Nah, nobody wants to read that.” (Simultaneously implying that you hold a worthless job.)

Sometimes, the word “trust” is used too often in social engineering attacks. “Don’t you trust me?”, asks your girlfriend, and to prove your undying love to her, you give her your credit cards, your passwords and so on and so forth. Forget the fact that the world went through the trouble of intenving joint credit cards, and multiple-user-owned folders to be able to share data,. Afterall, you don’t want people to think you don’t “trust them” do you? I know most of you reading this are thinking I’m being too harsh. But then, what happens when you dump your girlfriend? Just where do you stop your circle of “trust”? Your parents? Your siblings? Your friends?

What people don’t get is that there is a reason these guidelines exist – and they’re not draconian. They’re practical best-practices learnt through some hard lessons – lessons which, with any luck, you won’t personally have to learn yourself. It doesn’t take too long to create a flickr album that you share with your “trusted friend” instead of giving them the password to your own. It doesn’t take too long for a credit card company to send your wife/girlfriend a joint credit card. If anything credit card companies are dying to do it – and they may give you some benefits too.

So how does one evangelise the importance of security, or the cruciality of following guidelines? People have pretty high ignorance thresholds – possible loss of life and possible loss of money doesn’t really affect us. But there’s one thing that does – possible loss of reputation. People are egoistic creatures by nature. There’s one thing we never want to give up – our reputation, our over-inflated egos, our “social standing”!

And by extension, there’s one threshold that we (most of us, at least) never want to cross – the Self-Image Threshold. People will be willing to risk their lives, and all their money, but not their perceived self-image.

I was recently telling a friend about how I don’t just want me to authenticate myself to an application, but conversely want each application I use to authenticate itself to me. While he got the scenario, he really got it when I said, “What if that app you trust, starts posting unacceptable content to all your friends? I could send you such an app if you so wish.”

Next time you want to make a security pitch to app developers, users or enterprise personnel, just them their how high their Porn Threshold is. Now that’s a security pitch they won’t refuse!

July 12, 2008

Why "Street Hawk" is better than "Knight Rider"

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — archisgore @ 4:49 pm

Although Street Hawk saw closure in 13 episodes, and Knight Rider lasted a lot longer, somehow SH managed to be a lot cooler, lighter and entertaining by far compared to Knight Rider. I recently watched the new Knight Rider direct-to-TV backdoor pilot and realised why that was.

SH focussed primarily on street crime and it makes sense to have a super-advanced bike to fight street crime (especially bike gangs). Makes good for car chases where criminals have been escaping the police due to high speed and high risk pursuits. It was also a lot more realistic – plausible technology – no speaking AI and stuff. Street Hawk showed the Man + Bike combo at all times. Even inside buildings. And there were very few occasions where they had to be separated – in which case the bike itself didn’t play a major role in the situation, and you could do with some other secret superhero altogether.

The point is Street Hawk, as the name suggests, focussed on street crime by bike gangs and quick-getaways.

Knight Rider, on the other hand, introduces this cool new car that does little but drive itself and being bullet-proof, and being chatty. I mean really, what does it “do”? Or maybe it was the movie that made it look that way. But come on, couldn’t the characters just be driving KITT instead of it driving itself? And if you need programmed AI to figure out how to get out of a tight spot, or to strategize, then you shouldn’t even be making a movie out of such people!

All in all, Knight Rider seems pretty lame if you wanna watch a watch a sports car drive itself pretty damn fast only in places accessible by smooth roads, and assist dumb-ass human characters in figuring out what to do.

July 10, 2008

My first-hand experience with Microsoft Surface

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , — archisgore @ 11:26 pm

My friend who works for the Emerging Markets Innovations Group, recently got access to a Microsoft Surface acquired by their team, and I had the previlidge to go use it a bit. I’ve created a few videos, but no time to edit them and post them online. If someone will volunteer to remind me in a couple of weeks, I’ll upload some cool personal demos. With any luck, you should be able to see the Surface in action at AT&T Store. I live in India, so I don’t know whether this is a reality yet.

Anyways, onto the review. The Surface is definately what it claims to be. Perhaps I was a bit disappointed because it was exactly what I saw in the videos (I was expecting to be blown off my feet with some juicy previews, but alas….)

I’m sure everyone reading this has at least a dozen ideas to use the Surface for, but I was impressed at the preview apps that the team has developed. You’ve all seen them – the picture viewer which allows you to flip pictures, and group them and categorize them, and so on. And then there’s the Virtual Earth app which I found to be lacking in thousands of features given the power of the surface (and I’m sure there’s some team hard at work in some deep basement making that a reality).

When you actually touch it, it just brings to light literally thousands of possibilities. You wanna do everything on the surface. Share pictures, play songs, play videos, play games, etc. It’s cool, and it makes you wanna keep on using it.

The one thing that really strikes you when you begin using it are the cool new gestures it supports. It’s not just about multitouch – anyone can write WM_* commands or whatever to give you multiple touch points. What’s really important is how apps leverage those gestures to do cool stuff. Moreover, some of the user semantics have also changed. Instead of files and folders, you deal with visual “bubbles” and “boxes” that you group objects into. You put a bunch of pictures into some kind of a bubble thing that you can move around the screen. You can then scroll through the pictures vertically, or horizontally, or by tag, and so on and so forth. Naturally, the power of WPF comes out when you play multiple videos oriented in arbitrary rotations and dimensions.

Overall, was a great experience. Everyone has to have played with a surface to really feel its power (and some of its limitations). When you check it out, you really understand how tough it must be to put all that in one simple-to-use packaging that you just open up, plug in, and use!

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